Why is Hideo Kojima so important?

Hideo Kojima is a designer that has pushed boundaries, provided us with new genres and creates games under the mantra that it is possible to bring the impossible to players.

In this episode of Gaming: The Podcast Indie By Design talk about his impact on the video game medium, the importance of strong themes in his writing and direction and how it is that he has come to be such an important and unique voice.

[Sonic-and-Crash]

the last of the old gen developers ...and one of the true educated and intelligent men in gaming industry .... few can compare with him ..

[XbladeTeddy]

Not the last at all. Insomniac, Rockstar, Naughty Dog and iD Software to name a few are still around and developing.

[iamironman]

i don't think they compare in the same way. they are companies and no individuals and their games are not as original as Kojima - apart from early Rockstart and iD.

[XabiDaChosenOne]

Rockstar and Naughty Dog have little to none of the primary minds that made those companies what they are today. I dont believe you understood the original comment.

[Sonic-and-Crash]

@Xblade these are companies not indviduals creators there is a difference...Shinji Mikami (Resident) Miyamoto (Mario), Miyazaki (Soulsborne Sekiro) Andy Gavin (Crash bandicoot) these are people who can be named creators (and stand beside Kojima )

[RgR]

Well hes speaking of individuals....

but even as a company ID Software has done great recently but others can easily match them.
ND's last 2 full games have disappointed many. Top notch though....just dont think theyll last much longer. The greatest minds arent in charge anymore.
Rockstar is pure open world and its true that rdr2 was spectacular but others can follow suit.

Insomniac however are particularly unique

[XbladeTeddy]

I stand by my statement, I did understand the original comment. Those developers have people with creative minds just like Hideo or else how would they make such incredible games? Difference is Hideo owns his own company these other creative people are just working for someone so you don't hear about them as individuals.

[eddieistheillest]

@xblade .... you still don’t get it.

[Kilua]

@RgR
"ND's last 2 full games have disappointed many. Top notch though....just dont think theyll last much longer. The greatest minds arent in charge anymore."

ooooooo boy dropping some truth bombs on us here! Yea yea, we get it, Naughty Dog and Sony are doomed, DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED i tElLs yA. And just like that, they wont last much longer because you said so. You know how things work, clearly. You have the scoop. Dat detailed knowledge.

[Rocketisleague]

Kilua, just be sure ND are starting to miss the mark doesn't mean Sony are going downwards, they're just 1 dev. The lost their best creative minds. So what, There's plenty talent on the Sony camp. So long as MS don't keep buying up publishers Sony will be fine.

One negative comments about your soul company gets you this defensive? Jesus what are you American?

[RememberThe357]

This industry is full of incredibly capable creative minds. Don't blame developers for what the money men do. I swear every time I read one of your comments your on some dumb sht.

[iamironman]

invents new kinds of games and only releases top quality games. incredible designer.

[RememberThe357]

Truth. And the risk he took with Death Stranding was extraordinary. I was a little sad to see he caught some blow back from Sony, I hope that story was over blown.

[neutralgamer1992]

Sony took all the risk no other publisher was willing to give him a clean slate

[RememberThe357]

And how do you know that?

[calderra]

Death Stranding was not even the first Strand type game. See matthewmatosis' review for a breakdown.

TLDR lots of other games did similar concepts before. One example of doing exploration for social/community goals was Noby Noby Boy from 2009.

[Kabaneri]

Most overrated guy in the games industry. Nonsense pretentious storylines that are weird for the sake of being weird. A narcissist who plasters his name all over the credits in every game.

[VerminSC]

MGS V was my first Kojima game and I agree the story was an absolute mess.
Then I played death stranding, and at first it seemed like it was going to a fantastic story but it ended up being a convoluted mess with terrible dialog as well.

I won’t comment on gameplay, but as far as stories go, I’m not at all impressed.

[Sephiroushin]

MGS V was my first Kojima game and I agree the story was an absolute mess.

Ah you started with the game were he was not telling much of a story and making gameplay longer so people would stop bitching and with the game at the time Konami was an asshole...make sense ... Also the story is not a mess people who cant understand it are newcomers that dont read and people that like to have an answer for everything with 0 interpretation...

[ANIALATOR136]

MGSV was awful and Death Stranding wasn't much better. MGS1-3 is where his best work is in my opinion

[JEECE]

"MGS V was my first Kojima game" is one of the best self-owns I've seen on this site.

[VerminSC]

Sephiroushin

“People who can’t understand it are newcomers who can’t read”

That’s some major assumptions there. I actually use to be a literary major and I typically read over a dozen books a year. I’m perfectly comfortable with interpretation and how a story should be told.

Also don’t you think just because you are new to a franchise you should have some understanding of the story. Take god of war for example, I didn’t play the games on ps3 yet had a firm grasp of the narrative.

[VerminSC]

JEECE

Have you considered that someone new to the series doesn’t have rose tinted glasses on like you might?

You’ve grown up with kojima games so you’ll tend to be a bit biased. I went in with an open mind and no pre conceived notions and still thought it was terrible.

[JEECE]

@VerminSC

You are missing the point. This is a thread about why Kojima is important, and you explicitly declared that you aren't impressed with him only after playing what are probably his least-beloved games. It's well understood particularly with MGSV that the circumstances of his relationship with Konami negatively impacted that game.

Put differently, when someone asks "Why is Paul Mccartney so important?", you wouldn't go listen to something he wrote in the last 20 years and say "I'm not impressed," at least not if you wanted to your opinion to be taken seriously. You'd go listen to Rubber Soul.

Or if someone asked why Michael Jordan is so revered in basketball, you wouldn't look at his late career stint with the Warriors and say "he wasn't that great really." You'd look at what he accomplished with the Bulls. (Again, assuming you didn't want to come off as super uninformed).

The same applies here. Kojima's name isn't prominent because of MGSV, it's prominent because of 1-3.

[RememberThe357]

This thread is on some ignorant sht. Next we're gonna hear Tolstoy couldn't write and Walter Payton was bad at football. GTFO.

MGS4 is a God damn masterpiece. Fight me.

[MadLad]

@seph

Nah.
I'll never take away the man's success. Obviously people enjoyed his work; especially the MGS series.
But he's highly pretentious.
His stories are pulled out of his ass. Half of MGS 4 was cutscene. Sometimes not even driving the story forward in any meaningful way.
And I don't care who ended up enjoying Death Stranding. I found both the gameplay, and the writing, to be straight up idiotic. People praised it and then basically forgot about it not long after.

[JEECE]

@JEECE

Saying that Michael Jordan played for the Warriors is also one of the best self-owns I've seen on this site, especially in a comment criticizing other people for being uninformed.

(obviously I meant the Wizards, I just had the Warriors on the mind from an article I was reading earlier and so that's what I typed)

[Junkstein]

all the MGS games are connected on a micro level, it's not fair shitting on the designer because the fifth installment of his franchise was your FIRST GAME.

[eddieistheillest]

Stfu and play MGS1-4. 5 wasn’t even finished and we all know that.

[Agent75]

Totally agree. His last game was tosh and apparently was a sales flop.

[JEECE]

Imagine thinking that Kojima is a prominent Industry name because of Death Stranding and not because of Metal Gear Solid. Why is everyone ten years old?

[RememberThe357]

Jeece, I went away for like 3 weeks only to return to a God damn preschool. WTF is going on around here? I'm hot

[Sephiroushin]

tbh i didnt liked DS and MGSV as much as i liked his other MGS (specially mgs3) but the guy try to do different stuff and keep the games fresh plus his games run so damn good and smooth even on PC theyre optimized, they arent a bug fest like so many "awesome" games lately...

To the guy up yea every mgs has lot cutscenes and lmao the cutscenes always drived the story forward maybe you was asleep or something, like even the "joke" cutscenes drived the story on ...

@Jeece well we are reaching a point where many of todays "gamers" on forum etc started with cod and still on cod so yea...

[Junkstein]

wasn't a flop it covered the development costs, stop spreading misinformation

[calderra]

MGS's story is awful and a lot of people have heavy nostalgia because it was one of the first games they ever played that tried to be cinematic. Kojima's dialog is like 99% recycled Hollywood action movie cliches.

Luckily, teenagers exist.
Teenagers?
Yes, people between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.
Seventeen, huh? That's less than 18.
That's right. In Viet Nam teenagers went to war, but now they're playing videogames...
(Literally anyone can write a Kojima scene if they've watched any war movies.)

[goldwyncq]

MGS3 was his last truly great game. Everything after that, while not bad, just don't measure up to his earlier works.

[DuckOnQuack35]

This right here. I can't believe people think mgs4 was this huge master piece. It was the first game in the series that I hated playing, I couldn't wait for it to end

[Kilua]

Metal gear solid 4 was brilliant as well.... so there's that

[masterfox]

Because his games are awesome, stunning looking, and is not afraid of thinking outside the box, always keep moving forward in creating original experiences, and evolving current stablished game genre.

[ManMarmalade]

Basically this. Kojima is great at keeping games freah and interesting, even if Death Stranding was a bit polarized for reviews. He's good at what he does and keeps delivering his visions.

[TheProfessional]

You mean self-important. Even by metal gear 4 the story was starting to get shakey and 5 was garbage except for the gameplay. Stranding had many, many gameplay flaws and the story was absolute nonsense. I do love Metal gear 1 and 3 though, those truly are fantastic. But he hasn't been able to match or exceed either of those games ever since.

[Shane Kim]

4 was really good imo. But yeah, 1-3 are the best.

[Sephiroushin]

Thats kind off like captain obvious, because on MGSV focus was gameplay not story, he mentioned it on interviews a bazillion times, so people would stop bitching mgs was all cutscene then mgsv released and everybody and their mother bitched that it didn't had cutscenes and story was lacking, that there were too many tapes to listen to etc...

[Rambokind]

I'm sorry, but who?

[LoveSpuds]

New to videogames are ya!?

[CrimsonWing69]

I mean he’s good at what he does, but I will say he takes forever and always goes over budget. MGS V is the best example of that. An unfinished project that he took too long on and then was forced to deliver a project by a deadline and just rushed something out the door. The cut content could have made MGS V an epic entry but it’s just awful in my opinion.

Death Stranding shows he has a vision, but the team couldn’t really pull it off. I can tell from MGS V and Death Stranding he wants to deliver an open-world experience but I don’t think he understands how to pull it off. He made 2 vast environments that were just empty with condensed spaces to infiltrate. That’s not making use of an open world.

I think he needs to stick to his forte and create direct experiences that are rich in narrative.

[Lukejrl]

I love Kojima games. I think MGSV suffered by having a mother base being a whole other environment to plan the missions. It was realistic in that you go back to your base after extraction, but it hurt the story.

If MGSV was more like Ghost of Tsushima or Red Dead open world where the story plays out like that combined with the approach the upgrading research brought it would have been better.

[CrimsonWing69]

Yea I agree.

You take games like Ghost of Tsushima and compare it to MGS or Death Stranding and you can see he hasn’t grasped how to create an open-world game.

[GreatSako2020]

He definitely doesn't know how to do open world. He's better with doing a focused linear/simi linear games.

[Magog]

My understanding is that Konami interfered a lot in the development.

[CrimsonWing69]

Do you have a source for that?

Kojima has been known to go way over budget and delay releases after a release date has been given (watch the numerous MGS 4 trailers). How long after Fix Engine was made that we got MGS 5?

Publishers don’t have an infinite amount of money to dump into a project. There needs to be a product for them to make money. Konami gave Kojima how long for MGS 5’s development until they finally had enough and told him to produce a product at this specific date?

Clearly he wasn’t finished with it, but enough’s enough. Don’t waste time and money on celebrities and product placement. I was not impressed with MGS 5 at all. I thought the first few missions were great but once it repeated missions I couldn’t believe they tried selling this as a finished game.

[Dirty_Lemons]

He's one of the last old schoolers, and he's a God amongst us mere mortals.

[VerminSC]

Let’s calm down

[VersusDMC]

I love me some Kojima. Death Stranding was my 2019 game of the year. I don't get the Kojima hate in the states...i don't like Red Dead but i don't call it overrated. Just say it wasn't for you and move on...

[VerminSC]

Agreed. I don’t like kojima games but I can understand why people enjoy them. I’ve actually never enjoyed the Witcher 3 but can appreciate the game.

[1nsomniac]

Because he’s a creation of his own hype. A case study for corporations to understand how far you can get coning mindless numpties into fighting your wars for you.

[InUrFoxHole]

Don't care for him, but he's got a following.

[Taz Yamauchi]

Coz he made Metal Gear, but if he continues on his Death Stranding path, he is going to find himself unimportant very fast.

[Elda]

Clearly your opinion which is not factual.

[Elda]

I know he's an important figure in the gaming industry which I give him respect for but the only games I played by him were MGS4 & Death Stranding. I enjoyed playing them both,I have no interest in the other MGS games.

[bacano]

I think only a few people understand how to properly use the videogame format in order to tell a compelling story. Kojima does (another brilliant example is the Bioshock series IMO). You feel like the world you are getting into is completely amazing but logical, references to actual events are coherent and provide a solid environment to the gameplay. Regarding this, I think that MGS 3 still has some of the best bosses in games.

[Sephiroushin]

No only that, he is creative, for example the clock vs "the end" on mgs3 ... or memory card on mgs1 ... theyre simple things yet its different !

[Shinox]

Not on my book

[CrimsonWing69]

What about in it?

[x_xavier_x]

I've never been able to get through one of his games. I've tried pretty much all of them since the PS2 era. I'm not suggesting that they're bad, they're not just for me.

[Knightofelemia]

If a guy can take a shitty port of Metal Gear on the NES and turn Metal Gear into a big important franchise the guy is worth it I played the NES port of Metal gear I thought it was crap. I love Zone of the Enders probably my favorite PS2/PS3 game and Konami screwed him over hard. I have yet to play Death Stranding I hear its good but this guy can work magic with games. Only other guy who probably tops Kojima is Shigeru Miyamoto I really wanted to try out PT but Konami threw water on that fire really fast.

[Binarycode]

He isn't imo.

MGS are boring to me, sorry they are. and then there's the post office simulator.

If it's your cup of tea fine, just not mine

[RgR]

Hes not necessarily important in gaming but sure as hell is the most creative dev i've ever seen.

[Yusi-D-Jordan]

He's one of like 3 developers who try making original concepts and games. Say what you want about Death Stranding, but there's no game like it.

[PSX-94]

Kojima fucking owns.

[MadLad]

Snake Eater was good, but I find him overrated. I know I'm in the minority; I know how popular the Metal Gear series was, so more power to him.

[Knushwood Butt]

Peace Walker is amazing.

[JimNast]

I've only ever played MGSV and found the story non-sensical. Also, I couldn't believe how much he plastered his name all over every single mission. How big is this guys ego?

[Donnie81]

He’s not. The last really good game he put out was on the ps3

[Harryvok]

He tries new things, pushes boundaries and implements interesting tech and gameplay mechanics, which I respect. Has done a lot for the industry.

I personally don't think all his games are as great as some make out to be though. Often convoluted for the sake of it, honestly sometimes boring as hell. Hits and misses for me. Metal Gear Solid is an all time great for me though.

[Junkstein]

the man took lots of risks to bring new ideas and different storytelling style into gaming he is one of the major contributors who changed the industry forever, the fact that he writes, directs, produces ...etc in a single game is pretty amazing, when you play his game it's different from anything you ever played, like ueda games, there is something that distinguishes it from the mainstream games, plus the way he interacts with his fans playing with expectations is something that he doesn't have to do it but he does because he knows how fun it is to unravel stuff, some may not like some of his approaches to storytelling but at this point, he has nothing more to prove he is one of the greatest minds in gaming history and you cant deny that even if you hate every single game he made.

[atsugiT2]

I dont think peace walker gets enough love. I wouldve taken a ps4 version of that over mgsv and death stranding any day. I dont blame him for how five turned out though.

Really hoping he moves on from the death stranding series. Wasnt really my cup of tea..

[lelo2play]

Hum... he's important?

Honestly, not a fan of his games.